A new study has compared pre-installed applications found on smartphones from major brands, and Samsung comes out with the highest number among the brands examined.
Research released by cybersecurity company Surfshark on September 8, 2026, showed that Samsung smartphones have 88 pre-installed user-facing apps. Google phones had 71, Xiaomi had 61, and Apple's iPhone had 50.
The study also looked beyond the number of apps and also whether users could disable them and what kinds of data some applications might collect.
Samsung has 88 pre-installed Apps
Samsung had the highest number of pre-installed user-facing applications among the four brands studied.
Samsung had 88 apps in total, followed by Google’s 71 and Xiaomi’s 61. The iPhone had the least in comparison, having 50 built-in apps.
The numbers include manufacturer applications as well as some third-party apps that come pre-installed on the devices.
iPhone has 50 built-in Apps
Apple's iPhone had 50 built-in applications, with the apps developed by Apple.
Surfshark examined 47 of those 50 apps that were available on the App Store and had information about their data practices. The study found that these apps collected an average of eight types of data per app.
The data categories examined included location, addresses, user-generated content, and other information.
Why Pre-Installed Apps Matter
If you already have many apps installed, then it can be convenient to have a lot of apps installed and users do not need to download basic services themselves.
However, some users may never use many of these applications. The concern raised in the study is that unused apps, not knowing that they are still accessing some information, could still access some information according to their permissions and settings.
Surfshark’s research thus focused on both the number of apps and their potential privacy impact.
Some Apps Can Be Removed
Also, the study looked at whether users can safely remove pre-installed applications.
The ability to delete or disable apps is different for the different manufacturers, operating systems, and countries. Surfshark found that Apple's ability to remove built-in applications is particularly broad in the European Union, where users can remove up to 98% of the pre-installed apps covered by the analysis.
This is so that the number of apps installed on a phone does not mean all of them are permanent.
Privacy Is Another Concern
The study also investigated the data practices of pre-installed applications.
Among Samsung's pre-installed apps, some of the third-party applications were found to collect large numbers of data categories. Facebook and Instagram, for example, reported collecting 37 out of 38 data types listed on Google Play.
The findings do not mean that every pre-installed app is harmful. It does, however, make the point that users should check app permissions and delete applications they don’t actually need, if possible.
